Why Should You Care in the Workplace?

A guest post by Professor Paolo Gallo and Professor Dave Ulrich, reveals why it is key to care in your career and the workplace.

The article begins by referencing a study that began at Harvard University in 1938 and is still ongoing, asking the question, what makes a good life? Of the 724 men surveyed, when it came down to a fruitful existence it wasn’t money or fame that kept participants happy, it was good relationships and the connections they made.

They note the adverse effect the pandemic has on this strive for happiness. We have all had to cut out a lot of people, not even being able to visit family, and when we could, we could not even touch them.

This bleeds into our professional lives, this disconnect and freeze on relationships and life can lead to anxiety around the workplace and the job itself. With sectors dying, companies struggling and budget cuts across different industries, this anxiety damages the ability to work.

Gallo and Ulrich break down how to deal with this by 1. Self Care, 2. Serving others: your role as Leader and 3. Institutional legacy.

Self Care

To start, Self Care, in order to care for the self you must look at change and think, “What do these changes mean for me?”. This can range across several questions as posed by this article, how will the pandemic affect me and my own? How do I make a stance against social injustice? How can I upskill in this ‘digital 4.0 world’? How can I adapt to this economic crisis? How can I deal with the current political landscape?

One of the most important questions posed is how do I develop and maintain the emotional reserves of energy to cope with the demands of today’s world?

In response to these issues, Gallo recommends leaders change, and master the 5 C’s, chaos, crisis, complexity, confusion, and change. This being able to find your way through the chaos, have strong people in charge in a crisis.

Complexity refers to building the technical expertise to learn, adapt and make sense of the ever-changing world and its complex issues. It relies on the basis of trust and cooperation to solve problems along with the authority to impose someone’s views upon others.

Confusion refers to nothing being black and white in today’s world, this ambiguity in a workplace means concepts, ideas and situations have different meanings to different people. This is why it is important to reconcile these differences by having everyone included in the conversation.

Change is such an integral part of life, as Gallo states that change is ironically the only real constant in our lives, and how it is imperative to not resists but be open to adapting, as we have all had to do with the pandemic.

Ulrich also advocated for leaders to become empathetic meaning makers through three principles. Personalization, meaning the focus on the person, their emotional needs, and a leader having the ability to engage with their employees as real people.

He also pushes for harnessing uncertainty, in a time where there are more questions than answers, how to navigate through that and account for the turbulent world we live in. This is done via having realistic optimism, using uncertainty as a point of note to reinvent, transform or reimagine and to co-discover and co-create a more positive future.

Finally by offering guidance, in which you correctly and effectively organise your company, focusing on different factors like talent, leadership, capabilities, and HR.

This all to say, that when leaders take care of themselves they can care for others better. The article notes to do this you must define success for yourself, through your own passions and values, this may change over time but the challenge of defining what you want will persist.

It also notes to create resources to enable yourself to move forward toward what you want most. This can be physical, intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual, they may come from within or can be external.

Finally, for self-care, you must focus forward and be agile, instead of looking back at failure you have to keep pushing forward on the path to get where you want. When something works, hold onto it, when something does not work, account for it but move forward nonetheless.

Serving others: your role as a Leader

Leadership is not about what you know and do, but how you know and do help others know and do their work better, using your strengths to build up others. The article references research that people who care about others are 60% more likely to be promoted.

Those who gave to charity are 43% happier than those who do not, volunteering and helping others boosts your emotional, physical, and economic wellbeing.

When you are a leader, your self-care should then pivot into how you can help others become better too. This can be done by sharing emotion by asking how they feel, show empathy appreciating their circumstances, shape their experience by encouraging them and stimulate their energy to help meet their goals.

Referencing “Emotional Intelligence” published in 1995 by Daniel Goleman, we understand the term but we need to internalise the three facets. 1. Cognitively, empathy is to fully understand what another feels, 2. Emotionally, feeling what another person feels or at least acknowledges their feelings, and 3. moving to action on the matter and actually do something about it.

Another main idea from this being that listening is not that you understand, but that the other person feels understood. It is the difference between assuming you know the story and saying I get it versus the person feeling they have been heard and their plight has been acknowledged.

Another tip is to have a positive personal agenda as a leader, as you will engage with many people eg employees, peers, customers etc you must ask if your interactions are leaving a positive impact more so than negative. This is what can happen with “lollipop leaders” in which they have the head for business but not the heart, leaving employees with droves of work with no real indication as to why they should care about that work, this can be done by giving praise, opportunities etc.

Institutional legacy: create an organisation culture that outlives you

This focuses on the ability to create an organisation that outlives you and even the relationships you built. Companies tend to use individual talent through group actions as the sum is greater than its parts.

The article’s research found that organisational capabilities have 3 to 5 times the impact on business results than individual competencies. As a leader, your organisation needs to outlive your personal efforts and turns individual intent into sustainable collective actions, if you do it right your work culture will outlast you.

Some of the main points on this are people, hire, train, and promote people who share the values and intent of the company and turn those aspirations into daily actions. Performance relates to building reward systems with standards and incentives that drive the right behaviors and outcomes.

Information relates to improving communication and sharing information from the top-down, meaning CEO news to an employee discovery to an outside signal, must all be communicated effectively. Finally, work, establishing organisational policies like work hours, location, and roles that match your desired goals.

The article concludes by referencing the Health of Nations, organisations, communities, and people as the main foundation of their real wealth. Self-care and care for others is imperative in the modern working world and must be taken seriously to ensure leaders get the best from their workers and company.

This article was written by Paolo Gallo, Adjunct Professor, Bocconi University, Milan, Executive Coach, and Author, and Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and Partner, The RBL Group.